Raising our children and their parents

Monthly Archives: December 2012

This month marks ten years since we found out I was pregnant. It would be nearly four months before we discovered I was carrying twin girls. I should have been suspicious when my mom, upon seeing me three months pregnant exclaimed, “Gosh, you’re big! Are you sure you don’t have twins in there?” I chalked it up to being sort of a small person. At 20 weeks gestation, two babies were declared and I spent 24 hours in a sobbing shock.

How things change. Now a mother, my four living children are tenuous treasures. I live in a near-constant state of Code Orange, especially after this month has reached critical mass for violence in our country. I was proud to hear President Obama speak from the heart of a parent when he addressed our grieving nation from Newtown. Never since mass shootings became commonplace have I seen or heard a president so broken for the families of the victims. He is not a perfect man, but I appreciated him in that moment the same way I appreciated George W. Bush after September 11. Love him or hate him, no one wants to be the president in a time of great suffering that requires great decision.

There is suffering and then there is horror. It’s not new, but more rare and more destructive. The horror of the Israelites in Egypt when Pharaoh massacred the baby boys. The horror of the Jewish people when King Herod did the same thing thousands of years later. And much more throughout history.

What sort of enemy do we have that would seek to destroy a thing so sweet as a little child? What sort of fame does that kind of monster seek? How long must the blood of innocents cry out until there is justice?

Suffering I am slowly learning to abide with, but I don’t know how to live with it’s evil twin: the threat of horror.